You'll be grand then!

In all seriousness if you tend to hit it early / late you can miss the walkers. The trick is to work out where it is on most walkers "day plan". Conic hill tends to be in the middle of the second day for most people walking the way.

David

Sounds like you had the right path from Arrochar BB, but I wouldn't say it was wide at all points.

Certainly not wide enough for 3 abreast anyway!

It was good fun – while I was there at least – and I even managed to fall off after overcooking it at some of the big loose rocks. But it was short and a long slog on fireroad to get round to it.

Just got back from another trip up there. Was with the gf this time so had to stick to relatively tame stuff 🙂

We did the Braeval route from Kenny Wilson's book – nice and scenic but mostly pretty dull fire-road.
Persuaded the gf we should do one of the 'advanced' singletrack options on the route and were faced with a few km of pretty solid bog – not having much joy weaning the gf off trail centres, she was less than impressed!

Found a really nice little singletrack descent in the woods just above the David Marshall lodge in Aberfoyle on the way back down – they had signs up saying they were purpose built mtb trails. Only short but sweet and quite techy in places. Looked like there were a couple more but didn't get time to check them out.

The OS maps show the start of the climb to Earls Seat but there is a trail all the way to the summit.

So went up to earls seat at the weekend there… I wouldn't really say there is a trail all the way to the summit… it looked like there had maybe been a quadbike drive up there once, but it was mainly a lot of hikey bikey from the end of the landrover track. on the plus side the descent is good down towards dumgoyne, some bits too steep for me to ride, but mostly good 🙂

Conic hill and ben lomond are both great rides so long as you have good brakes.